


as in a glass, darkly

by historymiss



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23647747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: (Sometimes, Colum thinks, a rare luxury he does not allow himself too frequently, he could have lived to be a hundred and still be too young for the River)Dedicated to JeanLuciferGoHard, who gave me the prompt 'Colum Asht, with your shield or on it'
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	as in a glass, darkly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JeanLuciferGohard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/gifts).



They both go to the River too young.

(Sometimes, Colum thinks, a rare luxury he does not allow himself too frequently, he could have lived to be a hundred and still be too young for the River)

He has been there so often that he barely remembers the first time, if the water that lapped around first his waist, then his thighs, then his shins, shocked him not with its cold but its encompassing sense of nothingness, the misty reaches of the far banks the same blank gray-white of Silas’ robes.

Sometimes, Colum thinks he hears sounds. A distant breathing, counterpoint to his own. He is not a man given to poetry (he was not bred to be), but he knows a song from chapel, _exhalation unto exhalation, he gave up his death for the world…_

Something shifts, huge and dark, beyond the banks, and Colum fixes his eyes ahead.

The next time he sings it, the chapel echoing with voices that have never pierced the silence of the River, he thinks of that great thing breathing out into the mist in the world beyond death, and it feels like a sin. He fixes his eyes on the pale painted icon of the Emperor instead, lets his vision blur, and feels the cold of the carved marble pews under his hands. 

Colum sees it again, of course. The odds are against him on that one. He will always have to go back, to be plunged into the water where Silas cannot go so that he may draw something else into the world of light beyond. 

All that Silas asks of him is that he goes, and, of course, that he comes back.

Silas used to ask him what it was like. Back in the early days. Back when he still asked Colum things.

“It is like nothing.”

The answer displeases his uncle, a line appearing in his brow that is quickly smoothed away again as he straightens his robes. “Explain.”

“It is…” Colum struggles with words. He was not, after all, built for them. “It is like a world seen in a glass, but dimly. You walk, and you hear nothing but the river. You see- nothing but the banks.” He runs a thumb over a callus, wishes for the easy refuge of lyrics or catechism. 

“Hm.” Silas chews his lower lip, catches himself, stops. “I suppose I will see the truth myself, in time.”

It is possible. Colum prays that it is not necessary, until he prays that it is.

The last time Colum finds himself in the River, he kneels, lets the water that is not water soak him to the bone, and he waits for Silas, at last, to join him.


End file.
